[gothic-l] The Gothic equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon Thegn

Fri Mar 20 20:10:05 UTC 2015

On Mar 20, 2015, at 3:30 PM, edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca [gothic-l] <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> The "evidence" you list does not convince that Gothic Christians were any less warlike than their heathen (or Christian Roman) counterparts.

First, I wasn’t trying to argue that, I was trying to argue that it shows a degree of conflict with the established social order which could have extended to conflict with the military institutions.

Second, it doesn’t convince me, but it does make me think that the early Gothic Christians, until the crisis of 376, could have been peace Christians, and during and after the crisis of 376, could still have rejected some older military institutions, and if it doesn’t convince *you*, you should say as much.

> 1) The >Passion of St Saba< belongs to the a genre of fictionalized lives of martyrs. It cannot be taken as a piece of straight history.

If we’re only going to consider straight history, we’re not going to have any literary evidence, from within, about Gothic society and social conflicts. And yes, the Passion of St. Saba was a Greek text, but I suspect it derives from a Gothic source.

> 2) The Gothic Bible is a translation and so its choice of words is determined by the Greek original.

The Gothic bible is a translation and so Wulfila’s choice of words is what he thought would convey the Greek sense in the Gothic language.

> 3) It is questionable how much actual biographical truth is to be found in Philostorgius' and Auxentius' accounts of Wulfila's life. Auxentius' timeframe for Wulfila's life, for example, follows that of King David: just as David stepped into the public light at thirty, ruled over Hebron for seven years and over all of Israel for thirty-three years, so Wulfila is said to have been consecrated biship at the age of thirty, stayed north of the Danube for seven years and then led his Gothic community for thirty-three years in Moesia. This cannot be mere coincidence.
> 
> We are told that some of Wulfila's "progonoi" (='ancestors') came from Sadagolthina. But which ones and how many and how far back? Was it a greatgrandmother and her sister? To assume that it was his maternal grandparents, or all of his grandparents, is to read more into the account than is justified. In any case, what does Wulfila's ancestry have to do with the degree of violence in Gothic society?

> These accounts are arguably less history than polemic: Auxentius was writing a pro-Arian tract. Would giving the dead Gothic bishop a vague distant Cappadocian link have perhaps made him less objectionable to a culture that was never noted for its love of barbarians?
> 
> 4) As to the fabled leaving out of the Book of Kings, this of course cannot be corroborated. Given that not a little of the Old Testament is not without God l eading his chosen people against their foes and not without a tone of righteous gloating over fallen enemies, one might expect that more than just the Book of Kings to be omitted, if Biblical accounts of warfare would somehow set off Goths. Indeed, this smacks more of Graeco-Latin stereotypical thinking about "irrational warmongering Barbarians."
> 
> 5) The early Germanic onomastic elements are traditional, and the names in fact often do not make any real sense: cf. the OE woman's name Frithuhild (lit. 'Peace-Battle'). If a German today bears the name 'Siegmund,' does it follow that he must be obsessed with victory (Sieg = 'victory')? While a German woman named 'Frieda' (Frieden = 'peace') must be peace-loving? The etymology of names tells one nothing about how violent a society is.

> 6) An important consideration that you left out was the very history of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. T hese were clearly Christians, but their history hardly betrays any signs of "turn-the-other-cheek." Theirs is a bloody one marked by regular wars of aggression and aggrandizement.

Your point being?

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